Business and property types experiencing excess violent crime: a micro-spatial analysis

Area of Science:

• Criminology
• Urban Studies
• Public Health

Background:

• Most violent crime research focuses on alcohol retail, neglecting other business and property types.
• Understanding the distribution of violent crime across diverse urban properties is crucial for public safety.

Purpose of the Study:

• To comprehensively examine which urban properties experience the most violent crime.
• To analyze the distribution patterns of violent crime across various commercial and public property types.

Main Methods:

• Merged violent incident data (police reports) with municipal tax assessor data (2012-2017) for a large urban city.
• Tabulated violent crime patterns for 15 commercial and public property types.
• Identified outlier establishments experiencing >5 times the average number of crimes per parcel and mapped the top 25 most violent parcels.

Main Results:

• Hotels/lodging had the highest violent crime rate per parcel (2.72), but all property types had outlier establishments.
• 80% of property types had establishments with >10 times the mean violent incidents.
• The top 25 most violent parcels included diverse property types (e.g., shopping centers, parks, vacant lots, schools) distributed city-wide.

Conclusions:

• Outlier establishments with elevated violent crime counts exist across all property types.
• The most violent properties in the city were remarkably diverse, highlighting the widespread nature of the issue.
• Further research into additional property types is recommended to aid in comprehensive violence prevention strategies.